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  Method and system for facilitating printed page authentication, unique code generation and content integrity verification of documentsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20080091954. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001]The present invention relates to the authentication of a printed document's integrity; more particularly, a system and method for processing financial, legal, and other printed documents for a later authentication of the integrity of the document's data/content. BACKGROUND [0002]Computer security defines authentication as a process in which a computer, computer program or a user is, in fact, who or what they claim they are. Mathematicians and researchers, all over the world, have developed different mechanisms of authentication in this field. Digital signatures, challenge-response authentication, passwords, security tokens, fingerprints and retinal patterns are just a few of the numerous ways authentication is presently performed. Arguably, almost all of these methods have been developed to support the integrity and validation of digital documents only. [0003]Protection of a document during an electronic transmission or when it is in its digital form has been a primary field of research in the domain of computer authentication and security. Now that there are so many word processing, imaging, and conversion software applications available, converting a printed document to an electronic form, modifying the sensitive content of the data and then converting this document back to its paper form can be very easily performed. There is presently no fool-proof solution to handle the problems caused by such digital document modification technologies. Although the world may be aiming towards paperless offices, it remains clear that industries like finance, insurance, banking, law, and several others, will continue to use printed documents for several generations to come. Throughout these industries, documents containing sensitive information are constantly printed, copied and faxed. Thus, authors of and parties to documents containing data and content requiring durability and protection from alteration, such as Journals, historical papers, or legal documents such as Promissory Notes, Deeds, Wills, Trust, etc., require a process to validate the content's integrity as originally approved by the author. Securing this information is the key to maintaining the integrity of these printed documents. [0004]Document reproduction, signature forgery and/or slip sheeting are common methods of fraud or alteration. Although there are several methods available to the author to track and verify the content of an electronic transmission of documents, there is no current technology that captures the document(s) content upon the author's authorized conversion to printed copy. [0005]For example, an attorney, as part of his or her profession, creates a legal document and hands it to the client, some agent, or responsible entity. Once the document is printed, the client or entity may either use the document or pass it on to another entity. It is not unusual for the printed document to change hands several times throughout its lifetime. These documents are susceptible to attacks of many kinds, e.g., when a sensitive element (say a word, an amount or a statement) is modified maliciously to distort the meaning of the document. In this legal example, the alteration may involve the agreed terms among the parties to a contract. In fact, given the easy accessibility of word processing software, and desktop publishing, a similar but altered document can be easily reproduced. In order to maintain the intent of the author, it becomes essential in many cases to prove the veracity of the document's content as authorized by the author. The following demonstrates some of these scenarios: [0006]In the real estate transaction setting, the closing agent's or settlement agent's job is to coordinate, prepare, and record the closing documents on behalf of several parties (e.g. mortgage lender, title company, borrower, seller, real estate agent etc.), and then to disburse the funds. Attorneys, title companies or escrow companies usually conduct the closing. If the buyer in a real estate transaction obtains mortgage financing through a mortgage lender, then the mortgage lender might approve the closing agent after a "Purchase and Sales Agreement" is executed. The closing agent is usually engaged in a legal relationship with the lender (among other parties) in the transaction and generally will conduct the Title Search, Title Insurance, and Property Survey. [0007]After closing, the closing agent will officially record the deed and the mortgage at the registry of deeds or local clerk's office. Disclosure forms can be generated in package form, to provide documentation establishing the relationship between the attorney and the buyer. In a web environment, the parties or settlement agent can click on an order form to generate documents for this relationship and the transaction. [0008]Given all of the steps and documents involved in a real estate closing, and despite the various measures (e.g., title insurance, notary public authentication of signatures) taken to protect the transacting parties, numerous opportunities exist for less-than-honorable individuals to attempt to defraud the system and parties to the present transaction or future transactions. For example, a warranty deed is a legal document that includes the guarantee that the seller is the true owner of the property, has the right to sell the property, and ensures that there are no claims against the property. The terms of the Real Estate Purchase Agreement dictates a general warranty deed be prepared and delivered to the seller. Here, Seller agrees to defend title from all defects or claims. Seller has his attorney prepare a general warranty deed proposing to convey title to Buyer "WITH GENERAL WARRANTY AND ENGLISH COVENANTS OF TITLE"; however, Seller learns that his title contains a defect that would cost tens of thousand of dollars to cure. Seller simply redrafts the first page of the General Warranty Deed, replaces the conveyance language with "SPECIAL WARRANTY", and replaces the original first page which was drafted and approved by his attorney. The simple replacement of the word "General" with "Special" has significant legal ramifications in many jurisdictions. Such a change would likely escape notice by the settlement agent after the signing/closing when the document is put to record. Many years later the title defect emerges and Buyer looks to Seller (or the Insurer of the Owner's Title Policy) to cure the defect. The question of which deed page was the approved printed document is critical in resolving the conflict. [0009]Alternatively, a party may take a previously signed promissory note and add or change language to portions thereof to give him or herself more favorable rights. For example, a term requiring personal guarantee may be removed. Such forgeries and improper alterations can often be extremely difficult to detect, and even when foul play may be suspected, it is often difficult to prove the original content, or to compare differences in two different documents (the original and the maliciously modified document). [0010]Another example of an alteration would be the change in a beneficiary of a Last Will and Testament or Trust. In such documents, the party who approved the terms and content of the Will or Trust is likely to be deceased when questions of authenticity of the document's content arise. For example, Alice who has retired creates a Will which essentially makes Bob (Alice's son), a beneficiary to her assets. Carol who is Alice's daughter finds out about the Will and makes a plan with Eve (secretary of Alice's attorney) to change some of the language specified in the Will. Eve who is an accomplice here makes a change in Alice's will for the beneficiary's name and changes it from Bob to Carol. The simple replacement of the word on the Will has significant legal ramifications. In the presented scenario, this alteration of the beneficiary of the Last Will may go unnoticed for several years. When the questions arise for the integrity of the document's content, Alice may have died. It thus becomes very critical to come up with a method that can prove that this presented document as the Will of Alice is indeed a maliciously modified document and is not the original document. These and other document falsification problems are evident in many legal, academic and commercial settings. [0011]Attempts to build security features into document processes, particularly electronic document processes, typically focus on four areas: confidentiality, party authentication, data integrity and non-repudiation. Confidentiality focuses on ensuring that the data disclosed or transmitted is not seen by any unintended parties. Party authentication in these electronic processes pertains to ensuring that only the intended parties are participating (i.e., each party is, in fact, who they say they are). Data integrity ensures that the data has not changed in transit and that the data has not been altered. Non-repudiation proves that the delivery has taken place for the sender and proof of the sender's identity for the recipient. [0012]Regarding data integrity, various past efforts have involved providing software for comparing data and files, or providing programs such as checksum routines to add up the number of characters, words, and so forth in a document to see if there is a match between compared documents; such efforts have not proven to be very secure. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0013]The present invention provides, in part, a solution that keeps printed information secured and provides a system and method for facilitating authentication and data/content integrity verification of printed documents. This solution enhances the value of the existing technology investment in addition to enhancing the traditional methods involved with the authentication of a printed document, such as stamping or signature, for example. The present invention, in part, places emphasis on the capture and conversion of the author's approved content into segment and/or content identifiers upon printing to hardcopy (paper printed form) or conversion to some un-editable, yet readable digital representation, such as digital graphical formats of the document's style and content (e.g. pdf, gif, jpeg or similar digital standards). For purposes of the present application and explanation, the term "printed" or un-editable encompasses hard-copy (paper) representations of the subject document, as well as, other graphical (e.g., digital) representations or formats of documents whose content or data is not intended to be altered. [0014]The present invention further provides, in part, a system and method for facilitating printed page authentication, Unique Segment Identifier and Unique Content Identifier generation and data/content integrity verification once the author has formatted, approved, and converted the content to printed or un-editable hard-copy (e.g., paper) representations of the subject document, as well as, other graphical (e.g., digital) representations or formats of documents whose content or data is not intended to be altered. The present invention can be applied to documents requiring longevity and authenticity, including, but not limited to, academic documents, legal instruments, real estate and loan transactions, Wills and Trusts, and Journal or Historical documents. [0015]In one embodiment, according to the present invention, the author generates the document in any electronic word processing form. When the document is fully proofed and ready for printing and delivery, the approving author initiates the printed page authentication process in accordance with the present invention. After a successful login authentication at the Printed Page Authentication Server (PPAS), the client program--Printed Page Authentication Client (PPAC)--can provide a private salt value, which can consist of random bits or digits. The system then divides the content of the document in multiple segments determined by predetermined segment character intervals, for example, and appends the private salt value to the first content segment and feeds that as an input to a hash function. The latter returns a result called a Unique Segment Identifier (USID) for purposes of the present invention, whose value will be sensitive to the content of the first segment of the document. If additional content segments are available, this process is completed for each. Each segment result for the subject page can be combined in series and re-introduced to the hash function returning a final hash result that becomes the Printed Page Intermediate Identifier (PPII) for the exact content on that page, in one embodiment of the present invention. If a segment length flows to the next page, only that content within the boundaries of the beginning of the segment to the last character on the subject page is used. The following page always starts with a new segment in this embodiment. To achieve the utmost level of security, the Printed Page Intermediate Identifier (PPII) can be subjected to several stringent security measures according to the present invention; these involve adding redundant information to PPII, swapping the positions of elements involved using a transposition cipher, and then applying a secured encryption mechanism to encrypt the generated code to result in the Unique Content Identifier (UCID). The Unique Segment Identifier (USID) and Unique Content Identifier (UCID) can then be printed in some form on the subject page along with the intended formatted printing of the document's content. [0016]It is one function of the present embodiment to print these identifiers in a form resistant to degradation by multiple generations of hard copies (e.g. multiple photocopies or degradation by multiple facsimile transmissions). The Unique Content Identifiers may be printed on the subject page in alpha-numeric, barcode or other printable form available at the time of printing. [0017]If there are images (in addition to alpha-numeric or multi-language text) in the page, the present invention can either ignore such images, or incorporate them in a standardized way. If the document is comprised of character sets for different languages, these can be treated as individual characters. The present embodiment can create Unique Content Identifiers for all languages and character sets used in word processing systems throughout the world. [0018]In one embodiment of the present invention, upon receiving a request to validate the document's content, the present invention can authenticate and verify the integrity of the document's content by reading the presented document's page(s) to reproduce the Unique Content Identifier (UCID). The resulting Unique Content Identifier is then compared to the previously printed content identifier on the subject document. Upon a successful match, the document's page(s) content is considered valid, authenticated and unaltered. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0019]FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an architecture of one embodiment of the system of the present invention. [0020]FIG. 2 is a flow chart associated with an authentication service in accordance with one aspect of the present invention. Continue reading... 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